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The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
From Street Fighter to Final Fantasy: Yoko Shimomura, the composer who put the classical in gaming's classics
Alfred Hitchcock, David Attenborough, Harold Pinter, Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Hideo Kojima – these are just a few of the recipients of the Bafta fellowship, the highest honour the academy can bestow. Japanese composer Yoko Shimomura is the latest to receive the accolade; one of only 17 women and four Japanese people to have done so. She is also the first video-game composer to be recognised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the first composer recognised at all since John Barry in 2005. It is with good reason that the academy has honoured her. Shimomura is an icon. You'll know her music from Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, Super Mario, Kingdom Hearts, Legend of Mana, Streets of Rage and more than 70 other games she has contributed original compositions or arrangements to. Her 37-year-long career has seen her record at Abbey Road Studios, have her music played by symphonic orchestras around the world, and work in genres ranging from rock to electronica, ambient to industrial, pop to opera. And yet Shimomura seems unchanged by her success. 'Certainly, over the course of my career, there have been a number of times – a lot of times perhaps, compared to other people – where I have struggled. Enough to think maybe I want to give up.' She tells me that even as far back as her first job at Japanese developer Capcom, she thought she had maybe two or three years in her before she'd quit. She also says she applied for that job with 'barely any hope of getting accepted' – with a modesty that still seems a core part of her character. 'Even though I love this job, there have been plenty of times when it was really hard for me to continue. I couldn't sleep, and I would especially struggle as deadlines would approach.' Part of her fatalism came from the culture of video games in Japan in the late 80s. Despite the thriving arcade and development scene later leading to the mainstream success of the PlayStation in the mid-90s, pursuing a career in video games was seen as a dubious prospect by Shimomura's peers and family. 'This is something I think most gamers who were around at the time will understand,' she laughs. 'Generally, my friends and people I hung out with were not big gamers, so they weren't too familiar with what games really were. At the time, a lot of them were confused about what a job in video-games music even was! Certainly, my parents were not of the generation who would have played the Famicom [the NES], so they would say things like: 'Oh, video-game music? Is that a job? Is that real?' There was a lack of knowledge and understanding about the profession, really.' Surprisingly, given the male-dominated western world of video games in the 80s and 90s, Shimomura tells me that a lot of her colleagues in the sound department at Capcom were women. The developer split its composers into corporate and consumer divisions, where the top staff were all female. 'I felt that since the head staff were women,' she says, 'it was easier for other women to join the department.' Her peers began to understand how serious Shimomura was about her musical career with the release of Street Fighter II in 1991, the ninth game she worked on. 'That's when the tide started to turn. It sold so much, and so many people knew it and became familiar with my music, that it was a really significant title for me. I certainly think it's why I ended up working with Square on titles like Live a Live and Front Mission – because the bosses there knew me from Street Fighter.' For Street Fighter, Shimomura would study the character designs and personalities of the fighters, then design themes for them. She would also pore over the detailed pixel art stages for each character, and draw out details from their 'home stage'. She would then compose music based on the character's ethnicity and culture, often to striking and unusual effect. The best example, to my ear, is the use of a major key rhythm track for the Brazilian fighter Blanka, while the main melody playing on top of the rhythm is in minor. It's odd but it works, and gives the green-and-orange fighter a musical identity as as much as a visual one. Shimomura's classical background gave her the tools to work techniques such as this into her music. She eventually departed Capcom for Square, the most famous RPG developer in the world, because she wanted to work on games where she could utilise classical composition techniques. 'Why is classical music such a good fit for RPGs? I think it's because so many of those titles are set in medieval, European-style worlds where that music naturally belongs,' she says. 'But even if an RPG is set in a more modern take on a world, they're very rarely close to reality; the game world is of another age. And classical music is of another age too, so it's a very good fit.' The first project Square set Shimomura to work on was Live a Live, a 1994 RPG that takes players on a fantastical journey as eight characters across nine scenarios. 'There are so many different worlds and different settings in there, and very few of them actually needed classical music, so it was completely different to what I was expecting,' she laughs. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Shimomura would not get to flex her classical music muscles the way she really wanted to until Square's 1999 release Legend of Mana, on which she felt she could truly express herself. 'Until that point, at Square, the projects I worked on did not allow me to do something 100% from scratch,' she explains. 'There were always other factors, other legacy things that went before it. Music in Live a Live had to align with the characters. For Parasite Eve, I had to work with what was established in the original game. Mario RPG, of course, is set in the world of Mario and had to be 'Mario music'. I was not free to create something from the ground up until Legend of Mana.' Legend of Mana would be foundational for the rest of Shimomura's career. Three years later she would work on Kingdom Hearts, the now-mainstream success that trades on the unlikely idea that the worlds of Final Fantasy and Disney could somehow become merged. 'When it first released, Kingdom Hearts wasn't a big hit,' Shimomura recalls. 'After it was released, it was one of those hard times I mentioned before: I left Square, and I wasn't sure if I was going to continue in this job or not. But then they came back to me and asked if I wanted to work on Kingdom Hearts II, and that was significant for two reasons. One, it proved I could continue doing this as a freelancer. And two, it was the first time I'd been asked to come back and work on another game in a series.' Even at that point, 17 years into her career, Shimomura was uncertain about her standing in the world of video-game music. 'I think, both professionally and in a sense of personal growth, that's why Kingdom Hearts means so much to me.' Now, 37 years since her first job at Capcom, Shimomura has been lauded with Bafta's highest honour, and she is still as polite, humble and respectful as the young woman poring over Street Fighter's stages. 'I was blessed to have mentors and seniors who really helped me grow as a composer and taught me a lot of what made me who I am,' she says. 'I feel very lucky, and it is down to all those people that I am here talking to you today.' And her advice to other young women hoping to break into making music for games today? Be tenacious, persevere and work through that self-doubt. 'I think the reason I haven't given up is because I always make myself think of the love I have for music and for games. I cherish that feeling. And so if people do ever think they want to give up, please, cherish that feeling of love yourself, and keep going. I hope I can be an example for people when times are tough. If I can get over that, I hope that they can too.'
SoraNews24
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- SoraNews24
Final Fantasy IX gets its own pop-up store in Osaka and Tokyo for 25th anniversary
Final Fantasies grow up so fast, don't they? It's hard to believe it's been 25 years since we first met Zidane, Garnet, Vivi, and the rest on the epic adventure that merged the classic elements of the early Final Fantasy series with the more modern game console tech of the time, making Final Fantasy IX one of the more unique and memorable installments. And in honor of it, Square Enix is preparing pop-up stores full of limited-edition merchandise. There will be two stores, with the first opening in the Daimaru department store in Umeda, Osaka, from 2 July to 7 September. After that, it will move to the Daimaru in Marunouchi, Tokyo, from 25 July to 11 August. A wide range of goods, from stuffed toys to clothing and accessories, will be sold, all featuring characters and themes from the classic role-playing game. ▼ From top left: Zidane plush toy (4,400 yen [US$30]), Zindane shoulder bag (11,000 yen), Vivi plush pouch (3,960 yen), FFIX 25th Anniversary T-shirt (4,620 yen), FFIX music box 'A Place to Call Home' (2,750 yen), Vivi shoulder bag (9,350 yen) ▼ From top left: Vivi mug (3,520 yen), Mini acrylic stand collection (660 yen each), Vivi pouch (3,300 yen), FFIX 25th Anniversary acrylic keychains (1,100 yen each), FFIX 25th Anniversary magnet collection (660 yen each), Zidane Form-ism figure (6,930 yen) Other titles and franchises will also have items for sale at this pop-up store. ▼ From top left: FFXIV character canvas board (3,300 yen), FFXIV character sticker set (2,200 yen), FFXIV Sugar Riot sticker set (2,200 yen), FFXIV Doman Mahjong T-shirt (6,160 yen) ▼ From left: Dragon Quest Special Metallic Item Gallery: Roto's Armor and Helmet (9,900 yen), Kingdom Hearts II Form-ism Sora figure (7,480 yen), NieR: Piano Journeys (3,630 yen) The shop will be decorated with artwork from Final Fantasy IX and there will be special areas to get your photo taken among the various displays. ▼ Illustrations such as this one of Zidane will be hung on the wall. ▼ Standies like this one of Puck and Vivi allow you to get your picture taken among the characters. The two Daimaru department stores will also have a special Final Fantasy IX collaboration section featuring clothing and accessories based on the game. Specific items aren't mentioned yet, except for this Vivi top in the promotional image. Also, anyone who makes a purchase of 5,000 yen or more will get a randomly chosen Final Fantasy IX rubber coaster for free. It's sure to be a great chance to get some rare merchandise celebrating a great episode from this long-running game franchise. We can only hope it'll be as big as the 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy VIII was. You all remember that? When everyone came together and expressed their undying love for Final Fantasy VIII last year and Square Enix held all those huge events? That happened, right? Well… I really liked that one at least. Event information Final Fantasy IX 25th Anniversary at Square Enix Pop-Up Store Daimaru Umeda, 13th Floor Exhibition Space / 大丸梅田店 13階特設会場 Address: Osaka-fu, Osaka-shi, Kita-ku, Umeda 2-1-1 大阪府大阪市北区梅田3-1-1 Date: 2 July – 7 September Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. Daimaru Tokyo, 11th Floor Event Space / 大丸東京店 11階 催事場 Address: Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Marunouchi 1-9-1 東京都千代田区丸の内1-9-1 Date: 25 July – 11 August Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. Website Source, images: PR Times ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The ‘Magic: The Gathering' Team Had to Fight to Keep One of the ‘Final Fantasy' Set's Best References
Suplex's place in 'Final Fantasy' meme history lives on, even if Square Enix would prefer you call it Meteor Strike these days. Magic: The Gathering's new Final Fantasy set is an absolute love letter to the beloved RPG series, with hundreds of cards making a flavorful nod to their source material in one way or another. But one of the most fun references in a set filled with them almost didn't make it in—thanks to a quibble between Wizards of the Coast and Square Enix's translation teams. In a fascinating new article about translating the Final Fantasy set for its English and Japanese-language versions shared on the official Magic website today, Joseph Leis, the program manager for the Final Fantasy set, explained some of the challenges facing translating several cards in the set to ensure the standards of Magic's usual international translation process, while also working with Square Enix and its own translations for Final Fantasy as a franchise. But one of the most intriguing examples concerns one of the most fun nods to Final Fantasy fandom's western history that almost didn't make it in: the Final Fantasy VI card, Suplex. Or, at least in the form that Final Fantasy VI fans would've wanted it to. A red mana sorcery card, Suplex in the set can either be used to deal three damage to a target creature (with the added bonus of exiling them if it destroys it), or exiling a target artifact card from play. This second rule is a specific synergy so that Suplex can target another card in the game, the black mana artifact Phantom Train. It's a reference to the memetic legacy of FFVI players realizing that Sabin the monk, one of the game's expansive party members, can use one of his special abilities, Suplex, to physically hoist up the giant demon locomotive and slam it back down in an absurd image, dealing a ton of damage. In the years since its release, and especially in the advent of the online age, Sabin suplexing a literal train has become a part of Final Fantasy meme culture. But the thing is, Suplex wasn't called Suplex in the original Japanese game. It was called Meteor Strike (or specifically 'メテオストライク' in katakana) back when Final Fantasy VI was first brought over to North America as Final Fantasy III (several games in the series initially missed being translated), a name that Square Enix has kept ever since. While the original translation remained for many FFVI ports, it took until 2022 when the game was re-released as part of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection for the official translation to be updated to Meteor Strike. So Wizards and Square Enix found themselves at a bit of an impasse. Where possible, Wizards prefers that translation and localizations of card names diverge as little as possible from the English-language originals: Magic sets are typically designed in English first, and then translated into various languages, but the Final Fantasy set was the first in the game's history to be developed in English and Japanese simultaneously. Square Enix wanted to keep the Meteor Strike name as the official translation of Sabin's move as that's what was it always was in Japanese, but Wizards argued that English-language fans who played VI as kids would be disappointed if the card wasn't called Suplex as tribute to the nostalgic place the fight has taken in western fandom culture. 'This was something that principle narrative designer Dillon Deveney went back and forth through multiple rounds of negotiations with Square Enix,' Leis said, 'explaining how important that scene and the name 'Suplex' would be to English-speaking Final Fantasy VI fans, how kids growing up would yell 'suplex!' at the top of their lungs while playing at the playground, and how the nostalgia of the term was something that he wanted to keep as an Easter egg for English-speaking Final Fantasy VI fans.' Thankfully, Square Enix eventually relented, and a rare divergence between the English and Japanese sets allowed Suplex and Meteor Strike to co-exist. Now you can exile that one particular artifact to your heart's content, in the exact way you'd want to.
Forbes
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
What Happened With PS5 Exclusives This Generation?
The Last of Us Part 2 In a recent, large-scale report on the state of the company and brand, Sony said that the upcoming PlayStation 6 was 'top of mind' for the company, with some estimates putting it at a potential 2027 release date. But that raises a question. Despite its solid sales, was this…actually a good generation for PlayStation, namely its PS5 exclusives? It's been a strange generation. The concept of 'true' PS5 exclusives, ones maximizing the power of the new system without being cross-gen with PS4 at the same time, has been limited. We might as well start with what's arguably the biggest success, at least critically, PlayStation's most Nintendo-like game, Astro Bot. The GOTY winner was in fact PS5-only, and was a celebration of PlayStation itself. Fantastic! Moving on from there, we have a pair of Final Fantasy games, First, XVI, where there's some debate about whether that underperformed, and now it's no longer exclusive to PS5 at all, having hit Xbox. The other is Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the next installment after Remake, which was a PS4 launch game, putting it in a weird space. Final Fantasy XVI You can count the Demon's Souls remake, but that is, of course, a remake. Ratchet and Clank was a solid, if not overlooked, demonstration of PS5 tech in a way practically no other games utilized. Returnal is a bit of a cult favorite among some at this point but did not sell terribly well. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder One of the most successful PS5-only games was Stellar Blade, from a studio and IP Sony doesn't even own, but credit to them for seeing the potential and landing that deal. Helldivers 2 was a huge hit, but it had a day-and-date release on PC, where Steam was the larger platform for the game. Finally, we have the most 'major' release to date, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, which tripled the cost of the first game arguably without being significantly better, reusing large chunks of the old city and adding a character that was already added in a previous side-game. Projects like a Venom spin-off and a Spider-Verse multiplayer game were cancelled. Thankfully, we have Ghost of Yotei, PS5 only, out this fall. I would not be surprised if that ended up being the best non-Astro Bot PS5 exclusive. Hopefully, at least. Ghost of Yotei I listed a decent amount of games there, yes. But how many games of true significance? Taking a step back, this entire generation, we did not see a PS5-only game from Guerilla, Sony Santa Monica or Naughty Dog, the last of which became a meme for its endless remasters of its Last of Us games. Naughty Dog has announced Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, but that may not be out until PS6 itself. We have no idea when either new Horizon or God of War games are coming from those studios, much less them branching into potentially new IPs instead of endless sequels. Sony purchased Bungie this generation for $3.6 billion, but it did little except drift on with Destiny 2 and hammer away at a game that seems on the verge of bombing, Marathon. And neither of those games are exclusive, much less PS5-exclusive. It's not like there was nothing to play, but true PS5 exclusives were few and far between, and it's a situation where the most significant introduction of a new IP was Stellar Blade, not even a game from Sony directly, merely a deal it had secured. The same goes for Final Fantasy, where Square Enix seems to now be realizing locking themselves to PlayStation this tightly may be a sales mistake. None of this is to say that Xbox, in contrast, had some great console generation. I've devoted a lot of ink to its collapsed hardware sales, and the concept of an Xbox exclusive is close to not existing at all now. But if we're comparing the PS5 to past eras, I'd probably rank it fourth or even fifth in terms of what it has produced in terms of true exclusives. We'll see if the PS6 can change that, whenever it arrives. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
CNET
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNET
Getting Beaten by Magic: The Gathering's Final Fantasy Set Designer Was a Wild Ride
In an air-conditioned tent on a sweltering Los Angeles day at Summer Game Fest, I sat down to play a hand of the card game Magic: The Gathering and drew a handful of characters from Final Fantasy. Sitting across from me was the man who oversaw the process of turning some of the world's most beloved video game characters into playable cards for what's shaping up to be Magic's most popular set ever -- already a best seller a month before its release. Magic: The Gathering is a storied collectible card game made by Wizards of the Coast that's arguably more popular than it's ever been since it debuted in 1993. In recent years, the game has ventured into the mainstream by adapting the most popular nerd properties, like Marvel superheroes, Warhammer 40K and Lord of the Rings, into playable cards. These Universes Beyond sets, as they're called, have had special releases that make them legal only in select formats of the game -- meaning you couldn't bring them to play in tournaments with the most recent sets. That all changes with the Final Fantasy set, whose cards feature every mainline game from the original Final Fantasy first released in 1987 to Final Fantasy 16 from 2023. The new set is being released in the Standard format, which means players will be able to bring the most famous characters, like Cloud, Sephiroth, Yuna, Lightning, Noctis and Y'shtola, in their decks to play in regular competitions alongside the other newest sets. I'm no Magic scrub, but it's been years since my teen days when I started collecting during the Urza's Saga and Sixth Edition sets. The game has changed a lot since then, with new keywords and more powerful cards than ever, but the basics remain the same: Take a deck of cards with a mix of mana-generating lands, creatures, artifacts and other spells to battle against your opponent. Untap, upkeep, draw, play, combat, end phase. As I sit across from Gavin Verhey, principal Magic: The Gathering game designer and set design lead for Final Fantasy, I'm daunted by the task of playing someone who literally oversaw the development of every card in my hand. But I'm comforted that, like me, he's a huge fan of the Final Fantasy games, as was everyone on the team. "The good news is we've been doing the homework for the past 30 years of our lives," Verhey said. "I mean, we did play through the games, we all revisited the old ones." Though not everyone on Verhey's team had played every one of the series' games, collectively they'd covered them all. For instance, he's never played the massively multiplayer online Final Fantasy 14, but he pointed to a colleague across the tent at a different table -- "Dylan over here, he's played thousands of hours of 14," Verhey said. The Final Fantasy Starter Kit includes two 60-card decks that each feature a hero from Final Fantasy 7, including Cloud (pictured) and Sephiroth cards. David Lumb/CNET Turning Final Fantasy icons into playable cards The first official Universes Beyond set was Warhammer 40K in 2021, but Verhey told me Wizards of the Coast has been working on the Final Fantasy set for about five years, requiring a lot of back-and-forth from the card game maker and Square Enix to get all the details and translations right, along with the extensive design process to adapt the venerable property. "What really helped us out was that Square Enix has huge Magic players," Verhey said. One of the challenges was to incorporate Final Fantasy 16, which was released in mid-2023, years into the Final Fantasy Magic set's development. Verhey's team had precious little time to incorporate the game. "When it came out, we had a marathon weekend where we're all gonna play through," Verhey said. "We're putting in the chat, we should make this a character, and this a card, and this a card. It was super fun." In preparation, Verhey had saved 10 card slots out of the 310-card set for Final Fantasy 16 cards. Their goal was to make sure every game had at least 10 cards and at least one of rare quality, to make sure fans could find some representation from their favorite games. Of course, some more-popular entries in the series got more cards, leading to more from Final Fantasy 6, 7, 10 and 14 -- games that make their way on the lists of the best RPGs of all time. David Lumb/CNET But there were design directives Verhey held to make sure that players would recognize staples of the series even if they hadn't played every game. "When I was designing the set of common and uncommon cards, especially common, I wanted to put in things that were generic across many Final Fantasy games, so no matter which ones you played, you'd find a thing you recognize," Verhey said. "If you've played any Final Fantasy game, or even any RPG, you're like, Yep, there's the weapons vendor, the item person, there's the person greeting you when you come into town." Many of the most recognizable heroes, like Cloud and Sephiroth, are reserved for the rare and mythic rarity character cards, which are intentionally powerful, yet the latter of which show up only in one of every eight packs of cards. It's a tough balance, Verhey said -- but to make sure players still get these popular heroes in their decks, they splashed them into the art of common and uncommon cards for different spells, artifacts and enchantments. These often depict memorable moments in the games, including, perhaps most infamously, in Final Fantasy 6 where a martial arts character suplexes a train. (I'm not kidding. It's really a card in the set.) As I draw more cards, Verhey points out the many details his team made sure to pack into them, including a small indicator near the artist credit that says which game they came from. Even the simplest card in the game, a mana-producing land, evokes the moments and settings from Final Fantasy games -- when I drew a basic plains (white) land, it showed the iconic car from Final Fantasy 15, the Regalia, driving up a road. I was instantly brought back to playing the game and its boys road trip adventure (which kicks off with one of the greatest intros of the series). Every card in the Final Fantasy Magic: The Gathering set references a moment, character or location from the games. On the bottom-left corner is an indicator of which game the card's art is from -- this one says "FFXV" for Final Fantasy 15. David Lumb/CNET Designing Final Fantasy for Magic: The Gathering newcomers If you have a friend who's been into Magic: The Gathering, you've probably heard a lot about the Final Fantasy set already, and many newcomers are being drawn in by all the hype. I asked Verhey what design decisions they made to make the set as welcoming as they could for folks who've never played a game of Magic before (indeed, in addition to the interview, I and other Summer Game Fest attendees were offered introductory demos to learn Magic if we were totally new to the game). "One of the things with Final Fantasy, and any Universes Beyond IP, that I think is amazing is we just start that conversation a little further down the road, because if you play Final Fantasy, I don't need to explain health and mana and strategy and goals as much," Verhey said. Verhey also notes that the Starter Kit for the Final Fantasy set is a great entry point for new players, including two premade 60-card decks that are themed around Cloud and Sephiroth, as well as codes to redeem the decks in the Magic: The Gathering Arena online digital version of the game. But the team also made design decisions to make the Final Fantasy set easier to grasp for newcomers, too. "The mechanics in the set, many of them are things that are very approachable, like flashback [being able to cast some spells twice] and landfall mechanics [effects that trigger whenever you play land cards] that players know and have played with for ages," Verhey said. "The new mechanics are stuff like job select, which is a riff on living weapon from [Magic expansion] Mirrodin, which is kind of simple to understand: You get a token and put this [weapon] on it, right?" Verhey continued. "But the flavor really helps you with this because, Oh, it makes sense that a samurai katana would have a hero that comes with it and is holding the katana." One of the set's new mechanics is job select, which creates a basic creature to attach the weapon to when it enters play. David Lumb/CNET That doesn't mean the design process was seamless. Adapting some famous Final Fantasy heroes into a card game was occasionally tricky as Verhey's team decided how best to translate their abilities onto a card, often going to the teammate who knew that particular game best. Verhey gave an example he had "a heck of a time with": Kain Highwind, the best friend of the protagonist of Final Fantasy 4, who keeps switching sides with and against the party. After six different attempts at design concepts, he went to a co-worker who knew that game backward and forward, who sent Verhey a design that same day that ended up in the set: If the Kain, Traitorous Dragoon card deals damage to a player, they get control of him. Elegant. Of the 310 cards in the set, there are some that Verhey is particularly proud of. Esper Terra is a version of the heroine of Final Fantasy 6 and one of the first Saga creatures, a new card type combination introduced in the set, which switches back and forth between normal hero and pumped-up esper (think summons or guardian forces in other FF games) for some turns. Another card, a version of Sephiroth (Fabled Soldier, which flips over to transform into One-Winged Angel), leaves a permanent emblem on the board to represent his lingering presence in Final Fantasy 7, always needling the heroes in that game. James Bricknell/CNET How they balanced Final Fantasy cards for all Magic: The Gathering formats Clearly, Magic can get complicated, and this intrinsic complexity of cards and interactions is a hallmark of high-tier play and fascinating deck strategies. By making the Final Fantasy set legal in Standard format, Wizards of the Coast is enabling it to affect mainstream play, including competitive tournaments that feature the latest sets before and after Final Fantasy. This includes debuting the aforementioned Saga creatures, which Verhey's team developed as a way to embody some of the most powerful of Final Fantasy party abilities, like summons, that make a flashy impact for a turn or two. In development, the team tried out a "vanishing" mechanic where a summon-like creature would slowly die over several turns, which was read as a downside. Instead, Saga creature cards balance that big impact with temporary presence, dependably swinging the pendulum of pressure back to your opponent -- after all, you paid mana for something that goes away eventually -- but presents an interesting dilemma: Does your opponent block it? Kill it? Spend a spell on it? "We balanced [Saga creatures] using the power, toughness and abilities to make sure it would be appropriate, but I think more interesting is, once they're in play, what happens? They really make gameplay interesting," Verhey said. As it was the first Universes Beyond set to be legal in Standard play, Verhey acknowledged that there was pressure to make sure they balanced it well. That meant putting it through the same play design process of other sets, like the recent Tarkir Dragonstorm, with ex-pro Magic players play-testing and iterating the cards. "We put our whole team on it for the balance portion," Verhey said. This process will be used for all future Universes Beyond sets, like the upcoming Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender sets, which will be similarly balanced and legal for Standard and other formats. Wizards of the Coast could always change their mind and pare this back for future sets, but making these new IP adaptations ready to play in tournaments and beyond is the plan for now. These Cloud, Midgar Mercenary and Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier cards are different than the Cloud and Sephiroth cards included in the Final Fantasy Starter Kit. James Bricknell/CNET How Final Fantasy pushes Magic: The Gathering into the future Unsurprisingly, it's challenging to pick the IPs to adapt. A separate team from Verhey and his designers chooses which recognizable properties to pick, and one of their filters is deciding whether it's possible to bring to Magic in the first place. While harmonious, ambitious, aggressive and smart characters match white, black, red and blue mana identities, respectively, some IPs don't have much to offer green, the color of earth and nature. Other requirements include enough characters and monsters that can make small, medium and large creatures or can fit Magic staples like flying creatures, which are important for supporting play environments like drafts. Verhey and his team learned a ton from developing the Final Fantasy set, including tackling the arduous task of filtering all the characters into all five colors of mana in Magic, which define play-style and strategy. In the years developing this set, Verhey pioneered what he calls the "snapshot moment," picking a crucial time in that character's story for the card they're making. For example, there are multiple Sephiroth character cards. One is included in a Commander premade deck and is white and red mana, depicting a pivotal moment in Final Fantasy 7's backstory when he discovers his past and angrily burns the town of Nibelheim to the ground. Another, a black mana card, is the Sephiroth that players encounter during the main plot of Final Fantasy 7 as the evil one-winged angel trying to destroy the world. "They're two very different moments of Sephiroth's story that let us show different colors through them, and that separate method is what we're going to definitely take forward and use in future Universes Beyond sets," Verhey said. It's a perfect moment in our real-world game of Magic as I sit across from Verhey: He, running the blue and black deck of the Starter Kit, plays his Sephiroth creature card. Noticing he used all his mana, I use an instant spell to kill the villain on his turn, and a turn later, I play my Cloud card, swaggering with confidence that I turned the tide. Sadly, Verhey notices I overcommitted and plays a Magitek Scythe on one of his other creatures, which forces my Cloud to block and get killed. A turn later, he uses a spell card to resurrect Sephiroth to the battlefield and quickly overwhelms me -- a fitting, Final Fantasy 7-appropriate end to our match. Over the weekend, Verhey played a lot of Magic matches with many other Summer Game Fest attendees -- some veterans, some newcomers to the game. And what he's been noticing, this weekend and in the monthslong lead-up to the set's release, is the joy when fans see cards of their favorite characters and moments from the games. "I think the biggest thing is remembering that everything has fans," Verhey said. "There's 16 games we're trying to cover here, and every game, people are like, Oh my gosh, this card from Final Fantasy 2 is in here. Or, I can't believe this card from Final Fantasy 7 is in here. Or, I wish this character from Final Fantasy 8 was in here. People really do care about it, and the missing stuff is really noticed, is really relevant." Unfortunately, that meant cutting cards even Verhey wanted, like one for Eiko from Final Fantasy 9, as well as others left on the cutting room floor from Final Fantasy 4 and 5. (I was personally hopeful for more Final Fantasy 8 cards myself.) But within the tight constraints of trying to represent 16 games in a 310-card set, they still managed to cram in enough iconic scenes that respect the beloved idiosyncrasies of a video game series nearing its 40th birthday -- things like, yes, being able to kill Final Fantasy 6's Phantom Train with the Phoenix Down card. "In this set, [someone asked,] 'Hey, can you remove -- I don't know why it's even there -- killing an undead thing on your Phoenix Down?'" Verhey said. "I'm like, 'Absolutely not. That is critical. You cannot touch this.'"
